Burnt connection on immersion thermostat

[pjo123]

Hi all.

Today we had only luke warm water (all electric house) so I had a look at the immersion heater.

The live connection of the thermostat was burnt (as per attached pic) and about 2 cm of the live cable had melted.

I fitted a new thermostat and cut back a couple of inches of cable (cut back until I got past the odd coloured cable and back to pure copper)

The connection was not loose (or had melted solidly into place)

Any suggestions as to what could cause this please? I left the tank on with the new thermostat for over an hour and the waters hot and the connection is fine.

 

[ricicle]

Loose connection which had become solid when heat damaged or a faulty thermostat which had loose parts inside. More likely to be the former.

 

[Taylortwocities]

Mmm that looks like a Megaflo thermostat?

Not cheap eh?

 

[pjo123]

Mmm that looks like a Megaflo thermostat?

Not cheap eh?

Not if I brought it no

Very happy with the Megaflo performance wise.

Have two immersion heaters in it. The bottom one (the one the thermostat pictured was in) goes on nightly on economy 7 for a couple of hours, never had a problem with it in the 2 + years I've owned it.

The top one which is put on a few times a week during the day if we need a boost has died twice now (plus the thermostat once).

First time was in warranty and as they sent me a replacement thermostat with the element, I kept the old one as a spare.

Then around 10 months later, the new element went.

I sent them an email asking if they had any problems with them and pointed out that my old £10 immersion in my old copper tank had been in there for 8 years and was still going strong when the tank was removed, and that after spending hundreds buying the thing, I wasn't expecting to have to factor in another £80 a year in immersion heaters, they responded with saying there's no problem with them, but as a gesture of good will, sent me another one free of charge, which meant I had 2 spare thermostats.

One since broke.

The other was used today.

So in just over 2 years, not counting the ones that were installed at purchase, I've had to install two immersion heaters and two thermostats

beginning to wish I'd gone the copper cylinder and shower pump route.

Edit: Just found this thread. Seems like a few people have had a problem with them http://www.screwfix.com/talk/thread.jspa?threadID=67719